Iconic Burgh Island, situated off the coast at Bigbury-on-Sea in south Devon, England, is up for sale for £15m.
The hotel was sold for £8.4m in 2018 and new owner Giles Fuchs, director of Office Space In Town, won planning permission for a £7-10m redevelopment in 2022.
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The island comes with a Grade II-listed white art deco hotel, the inspiration for two of Agatha Christie’s novels, And Then There Were None and the Hercule Poirot mystery, Evil Under the Sun.
Rich history includes visit from playwright Noel Coward
The planned redevelopment includes a new west wing for the hotel, extensions to the bar and the Pilchard Inn – built in the fourteenth century – along with staff rooms, a spa and a new restaurant to be situated on the mainland.
Burgh Island can only be accessed at high tides by a vehicle called a sea tractor, and the hotel has a rich history, according to the BBC.
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It was visited by playwright Noel Coward in the 1930s, and scenes from the BBC’s 1987 dramatisation of Christie’s story Nemesis were filmed there, along with the 2002 TV adaptation of Evil Under The Sun.
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By GlobalDataDemanding mistress takes its toll on owner
But Giles Fuchs has now announced that he is not the man for the next stage of the development. Finding a further £7m would mean diverting resources from his main London projects.
Running the hotel had taken a “huge amount of emotional effort”, Fuchs said, and had ended up taking over his life and other businesses. What he described as “a demanding mistress” had taken its toll, although he was pleased to have turned around the hotel’s turnover from £2.4m in 2018 to £6.3m in 2022.
He felt that it was now time, however, for someone else to take over the reins.
Fuchs added that a former care home earmarked for staff accommodation, as well as a cafe and Warren Cottage at Bigbury-on-Sea, are not part of the sale and will be leased to the hotel.
